1. The Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to enhancing web feed management, and more particularly, to methods and systems for creating a database of web feeds and providing web feed organizational assistance to users.
2. The Relevant Technology
Computer systems and related technology affect many aspects of society. Indeed, the computer system's ability to process information has transformed the way we live and work. Computer systems now commonly perform a host of tasks (e.g., word processing, scheduling, database management, etc.) that prior to the advent of computer systems were performed manually. More recently, computer systems have been coupled to one another to form computer networks over which the computer systems can communicate electronically to share data.
Often, electronic communication on a network includes a client computer system (hereafter referred to as a “client”) requesting access to a network service at a server computer system (hereinafter referred to as a “server,” or “host”). Accordingly, the client sends a request to the server for particular access to its system resources, wherein if the client is authorized and validated, the service responds with a response message providing the desired information. Of course, other messaging patterns between client and service are available and include simple singleton messages as well as more sophisticated multi-message exchanges such as, e.g., notification, solicit-response, pub-sub patterns, polling, kick-push, queuing, and others. Further, these types of communication are governed by various requirements and capabilities defined by both the client and the service in contracts for distributed systems.
Along with computing systems, the Internet has revolutionized the way people communicate and receive information. In essence, the Internet includes a large constellation of networked computers that are spread out over much of the world. Sophisticated computers, software and networking technology have made communication over the Internet fairly straightforward from the view point of end user.
With the advent of the Internet, the World Wide Web has become an increasingly popular way to receive information. For example, rather than retrieving the latest news from television or newspapers, many people obtain the information they are seeking from numerous websites that are a mouse-click away. Recently, an increasing number of webpages are available related to news, weather, sports, entertainment, stocks, weblogs, and the like.
Because of the innumerable websites, categorized collections of websites have been created to assist in the organization and taxonomy of websites. One of the most popular of such collections is the Open Directory Project (“ODP”; http://www.dmoz.org). The ODP is a multilingual open content directory of World Wide Web links that is constructed and maintained by a number of editors. The organization of ODP is hierarchical, wherein each website listing is placed into a topical folder path. For example, some of the parent directories include Adult, Arts, Business, Computers, Games, Health, Home, News, Recreation, Reference, Regional, Science, Shopping, Society, and Sports. The ODP contains millions of website listings organized into thousands of categories. Other categorized collections of websites also exist, including, but not limited to, general directories such as the “Go directory” and Zeal, and specialized directories such as ChefMoz (a restaurant directory), and MusicMoz (a music directory).
The increase in the number of information sources on the Internet is accompanied by the risk that users will be deluded by available sources. When users amass a large number of preferred websites, the ability to visit each site to discover the content can be time consuming. To alleviate this problem, web feeds have been introduced to help users quickly scan the content of one or more web sites. Web feeds are a mechanism used for publishing regular updates of web-based content. Common web feed protocols include RSS (“Really Simple Syndication”, or “Rich Site Summary”), Atom, and the like. Web publishers can use web feeds to provide updates to users, such as the latest news headlines or weblog postings. To view the updates, users typically use web feed “readers” or “aggregators” to collect and monitor their favorite feeds in one place.
Although the advent of web feeds and web feed readers has facilitated the ability to quickly browse the content of various web pages, web feeds can quickly become disorganized within a reader or aggregator as more feeds are added. Many users neglect the organization of their web feeds because of the time it takes to organize them, and because the users are unsure of a logical organization method.
The subject matter claimed herein is not limited to embodiments that solve any disadvantages or that operate only in environments such as those described above. Rather, this background is only provided to illustrate one exemplary technology area where some embodiments described herein may be practiced.